Vaguely Moroccan Baby Cous Cous

Note: When I mixed up the first batch of this meal, I went gaga for it. I'd only made enough for E, but will be packing some for lunches for the whole family in the future.

I threw this meal together as a way to introduce baby E to some new textures and flavors. I had (unsulfered) dried apricots in the pantry, as well as raisins, and I thought that those might go well with cous cous and some spices. Sounds vaguely Moroccan, no? I did a little google search and it turns out I was right. I cooked up the apricots and raisins separately, boiling each in water until soft. Pureed each of the fruits and froze them in my freezer trays.


Vaguely Moroccan Baby Cous Cous
- 1/4 cup homemade veggie broth (see recipe here)
- 1/4 cup cous cous
- 1 cube (approx 2-3 Tbsp) pureed cauliflower
- 1-2 tsp each pureed apricot and raisin
- a dash-let cinnamon and cumin

Bring broth to a boil, add cous cous and remove from heat. Let sit for 5 minutes, until liquid is absorbed. I only used about 3 Tbsp of cous cous for this recipe, but make as much as your baby (and you) want to eat, adding more fruits/veggies if needed. To however much cous cous you want to eat add cauliflower, fruits and spices. Mix until well blended. Feed to baby.

What we're eating now

An updated list of popular fruit and veg combos from E (see previous post for more ideas). To be fair, she doesn't seem to dislike much.

Pear Banana Blueberry

Sweet Potato and Apple with cinnamon

Any combination of: Pureed Soup veggies (onion, carrot, celery and sweet potato with dill and parsley), Sweet Potato, Carrot, Cauliflower and/or Potato

Peas and Potatoes

Avocado and Banana

Pear (or Apple) Mango

Thinking ahead

Even though E is only on simple purees right now, I'm already thinking ahead to when she's eating chunkier foods with more ingredients. Ideally, I'd want her to eat the same things as her dad and me, just smashed or cut up into baby-sized bits. Which means her dad and I are going to have to start eating more wholesome meals more often. But there are a few meals in our repertoire that, with a few tweaks, will be very baby friendly. One such meal is something my husband affectionately calls Israeli Cous Cous Heaven. With a few tweaks (leaving out or cutting down on the tomatoes, lemon & spices) a nice baby portion could be reserved before adding the cous cous. I'd be inclined to give her some cous cous when she's big enough, but ideally she'd have more veggie than pasta in her bowl. I'm also excited to make crust-less potpies and cassoulets - some of my favorite recipes have biscuit toppings, so it would be easy to give her a portion with little to no crust.

Current favorite flavor combinations

I haven't cooked anything of note lately, but I have been trying out different flavor combinations with what we've got in the freezer. E's favorites include:

Peach, Pear & Prune

Mango & Banana

Carrot & Apple

Sweet Potato, Apple, Mango & Prune

Banana & Apple

Banana, Pear & Prune

Does eating solids help baby sleep through the night?

Ahh, the eternal question of how to get your baby to sleep through the night... I've been pondering it for months now. E has always been a bad sleeper. Well, not always. She started sleeping through the night (from 11pm to 6am) at about a month old. And as is typical for babies that age, she had no problem falling asleep during the day, although I remember her mostly napping in my arms. Around three months old, she started waking up twice a night. Since then her typical night is to fall asleep between 7:30 and 8pm, wake up between 11 and 1 and then again anywhere from 3 to 5 and then up for the day around 7:30 or 8am. A lot of interrupted sleep for mommy and baby (and daddy, too). Her napping has gotten progressively worse, too. A 30 minute nap is the norm, when I can get her to nap at all.

When you have a baby that doesn't sleep, you get a lot of "advice" on how to get her to sleep. One very common piece of advice is to feed the baby rice cereal or table food to "satisfy" her. The phrasing of that one really gets my goat. But, as much as I hate to admit it, the past two nights, E has been sleeping much better. First she woke at 2 and 6:30 (at which point she was up for the day), and last night she only woke once, at 5:15 (and went back to sleep for another 2 hours!). No significant improvement on the nap front, but a well-rested mommy can handle a nap-free day much better than an exhausted one.

 We'll see how it goes from here. Who knows? Maybe the last two nights have been a fluke, or maybe just a coincidence. But I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that, whatever the cause, she continues to sleep well at night.

Squeaches

Now that E has a few foods in her repertoire, I've started mixing fruits and veggies together. My reasons are several: 1. Variety 2. She seems to be more receptive to some flavors when they're mixed with flavors she's already familiar with.

This morning we tried peaches on their own. No go. So I gave her peach and banana with rice cereal, which she was happy to eat. Tonight for dinner, she was supposed to have butternut squash with rice cereal... I think now is a good time to remind any other parents making their own baby food to LABEL EVERYTHING. Lots of purees look alike, especially the orange ones. This is, of course, my way of saying that I grabbed the peaches instead of the squash. But that's not all, folks. I grabbed the squash, too, thinking I had two containers of the same thing. And mixed them both into the rice. Only when I noticed the different colors did I realize what I'd done. Since it was already mixed together, I figured I'd see what happened. Magic, that's what happened. She LOVED her squeaches and rice.

First foods

It's been six long months, but little E has finally started solid foods! In preparation for the big day, I bought an 11-cup food processor and a bunch of freezer trays with lids. My plan was/is to make a new food as close to every night as possible. So every night I steam or bake up a new fruit or veggie, puree it and freeze it. The next day, I put the frozen food in a freezer bag, labeled with food and the date. The freezer trays get washed and I make the next batch.

So far I've made:
- Sweet Potato
- Butternut Squash
- Carrot (notice a color scheme?)
- Apple
- Pear
- Peaches

Up next:
- Peas
- Blueberries

The one thing they don't seem to tell you in any of the make-your-own-food resources I've seen is the consistency for first foods. So after a terribly failed attempt at sweet potatoes (waaaaaay too thick), I went to the store to see what jarred baby food looks like. Turns out, it's super watery. I also tried giving her rice cereal (the one thing I've not made on my own), which had a serving suggestion for baby's first meal. The ratio was 3:1 water to rice. Once I got the consistency down I started mixing one veggie or fruit with the cereal. Success!

I've also started taking notes when I see jars of baby food for flavor combination to try at home. But more on that later.